The Escapement: The Network

Very luxurious product with some great puzzles. However most were partially based on luck as even if you knew what you were doing it was sometimes a bit trial and errory to get their intended solution. Also the videos between chapters were far too long and we got a bit bored. Good game still!

We even sat on the floor for it.

The components are incredibly lavish and impressive. Absolutely 10/10  components.

However, the puzzles leave something to be desired. Some of them are just a bit vague, and some of them are more like following a fiddly set of instructions than actually solving a puzzle. Not so much a test of lateral thinking, but a test of your patience.

Also, several times, you have to combine multiple puzzle results to get "the answer", and then if your combined answer is wrong, you get no feedback as to specifically which component has gone wrong, so you have to check them all again.

We are experienced puzzlers and room escapers but this really felt like a slog for most of the time we were playing it.

I'm slightly surprised this is getting such good reviews as we felt let down by such an expensive boxed game.

Starting with the good stuff - the production value is excellent.  I haven't experience a play-at-home game that matches this one although that is reflected in the price.  The story was good although the videos were a little long and we lost interest during them a bit. There were a couple of really nice puzzles too, although overall the puzzles were a tad mediocre and a couple were poor.  In my book a good puzzle should be challenging but once you figure it out you should be sure you have the right answer. For several of these puzzles we had the right answer but weren't confident we did or we found their wording ambigous leading to multiple possible solutions.

The real flaw in this game was the answer system.  You have to enter a combination which involves the answers to multiple puzzles at once and if it's wrong you don't have any idea which bit is wrong. When that is coupled with poor puzzles with ambiguous wording you end up in a very frustrating position where you have too many combinations to feasibly try.  This problem is compounded by the hint system which we found basically useless.  When we couldn't find the right combination of answers we looked to the hints to help narrow things down but they only told us things we already knew and didn't remove any of the ambiguity we were seeing.

I'm afraid we found the middle video unpleasant to watch (do not play this with children) to such an extent that we basically skipped that puzzle.

The other frustrating thing is that you can only play it once.  As the game was so expensive we tried very hard to play it in such a way that we might be able to give it to friends to play afterwards. But that was basically impossible. £40 is a lot for a single-play box game.

The production quality is definitely 5/5 for this game - no faults from me there. 

The puzzles themselves left something to be desired in places. Nothing was too complex, but occasionally ambiguous. The hint system and answer submission is not brilliant for a play at home experience. 

The price is appropriate given the production (comparable to playing an escape room with 2 people). But for a play at home experience I would hope for stronger puzzles - for me they are weaker than your average exit game. 

The Network is a premium at-home escape game-in-a-box, which combines printed and physical artefacts together with video delivered via an online portal. You'll also have to discover content placed on a variety of well-known external internet sites.

The game is separated into 3 sections, and we played through the whole thing as a couple in around 2 hours. It is not the cheapest experience out there but, for the original content and moments of delight you get while playing, I'd say it's absolutely still good value for money.

Update:- I recently offered to help someone who was stuck at a particular point in the game. Even though I had not kept my notes, I was pretty confident I would be able to provide a nudge since we had breezed through that section. It turns out that this might have been partly by luck rather than by good judgment as, on playing through the second time, I became stuck as to understanding why a particular answer wasn't being accepted. This led me to discover that both the input verification and hinting systems could be improved (which hadn't become apparent on our first playthrough since we'd not made use of either). It's nothing that the designers can't fix, but could definitely lead to player frustration, so I'm knocking off half a star from my previous rating.

I think as an example of this genre, this was fantastically done, and I'm not surprised after our experience at the venue a few months ago. It felt carefully put together and so well presented. We didn't time ourselves although know we wasted a fair amount of time down a rabbit hole (entirely our own fault for not paying enough attention). Good variety of puzzles with excellent immersion given we were playing out of a box at home, ramped up to a fun finish. Website well executed and delighted to see the return of Jacob (a trainee GM who hosted one of the games when we hit The Escapement).  I can only imagine The Network will be setting the bar for this kind of game, and we felt the price represented fair value for what we got.  

A quality game with high production value. We had great fun with some head scratching moments (there is an in-built help system to keep you going.) Would highly recommend. Looking forward to the next instalment! 

Fantastic escape room style game in a box.  Amazing world building and attention to detail and with very clever aspects and surprises. Highly recommend!

Escapement have created an excellent, creative and challenging home escape game! It's a brilliant concept with excellent puzzles, that is very well executed. It's more expensive than other at home escape games, but it's well worth the price!